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Super Kings hailed and feted
Saturday, Jul 10 2010
Chennai: It was an evening of recall and revelry yesterday as the Chennai Super Kings and their captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were the toast of the admiring crowd that saluted the team’s stupendous achievement of winning the 2010 Indian Premier League title.
‘Captain Cool’ Dhoni, who celebrated his 29th birthday on July 7 and his new bride, Sakshi Singh Rawat, were of course the cynosure and the adoring fans didn’t seem to have enough of them!
The couple that was very fetching to the eyes, spent about an hour at the Madras Cricket Club that inducted Dhoni as a honorary member.
Dhoni joined the likes of World chess champion Viswanathan Anand, cricketing legends Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar, tennis icons Ramanathan and Ramesh Krishnan, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in the list of World-class Indian sportspersons who in the past received membership to the 164-year old club.
Also present were Mr N Srinivasan, Managing Director, India Cements, the franchise owners of Super Kings, and Mr Gurunath Meiyappan, owner of the team, besides Mr Kasi Viswanathan, Secretary, Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, among other dignitaries.
Mr TG Thyagarajan, President, Madras Cricket Club, formally handed over the membership document to Dhoni who in turn autographed a cricket bat.
Mr N Srinivasan, who is also the secretary of Board of Control for Cricket in India and president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, heaped high praise on Dhoni for the manner in which he led the Super Kings to title triumph after overcoming an unsteady start to the IPL campaign.
“I thank the MCC for this warm and affectionate felicitations to the Super Kings…We have an outstanding team and it played like a family. We also have a great captain in Dhoni whose leadership and management qualities played their part in the team winning the IPL,” said Mr Srinivasan.
In his reply to the several speakers who eulogized Dhoni and the Super Kings team, the skipper sought to deflect attention from his own performances and highlight those of the local players like Subramaniam Badrinath, Murali Vijay and Ravichandran Ashwin who made significant contribution to the eventual success.
“A large part of our success in winning IPL-3 was thanks to the local players who really stepped up. The crowd support was great and the people of the city really appreciate good cricket. You support Chennai, but you also support good cricket. So, please stay that way,” Dhoni remarked.
On his links to Chennai, the India captain traced it to his very first visit to the city some 11 years ago when he travelled from Jameshedpur for some first-class match.
“It took us two days to travel from Jameshedpur to Chennai in 1999-2000, and I thought Chennai was too far to travel. I didn’t know then that five years later, I would make my Test debut here and three years after that spend a month of my life in the city, training and working hard to do my best for the people of Chennai,” he recalled.
“It feels great to stand here and say I am a proud member of Madras Cricket Club,” he announced to the accompaniment of cheers from the sizeable crowd.
The Club officials presented mementos to Dhoni and a few of the Super Kings players (Chennai-based) who were present on the occasion.
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